Cuomo warns Facebook about child safety claims

By The Associated Press

Monday, October 1, 2007 9:46 AM EDT

ALBANY - The social networking Web site Facebook has been warned that it could face a consumer fraud charge for failing to live up to claims that youngsters there are safer from sexual predators than at most sites and that it promptly responds to concerns, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Sunday.
“We expect an immediate correction eliminating the dangers exposed by our investigation,” said the spokesman, Jeffrey Lerner.

Cuomo announced last week that he had subpoenaed Facebook after he said the company did not respond to “many” complaints by investigators who were solicited for sex while posing as 12- to 14-year-olds on the site.

Officials from Cuomo's office discussed the issue by phone and fax with Facebook on Friday after they said Facebook took three days to answer calls and e-mails from state investigators.

An official in Cuomo's office said he and others are scheduled to meet with Facebook representatives this week and anticipate changes will follow immediately.

“We said, ‘You have got to make accurate representations on your Web site,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because court filings haven't yet been made. “What we told them is, ‘Correct the language describing the site and stop marketing yourself as this pristine Web site ... parents have a misimpression. You can't mislead people.”

Lerner said Facebook's contention of being safer than most sites was accurate when it started out as a closed site 3.5 years ago.

But it's now much larger, and the safeguards and apparently the response times for complaints aren't what they once were, he said.

There was no immediate response to e-mail and phone messages left for a Facebook representative.

But a statement issued a week ago stated the company was concerned about Cuomo's claim that sexual predators could use the site to meet with children.

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